An Ireland & Scotland Journey

By: Samie

Travel Dates: May 29th, 2026
Countries: Ireland & Scotland

Day 4

(Galway, Drive Back to Dublin, Flight to Edinburgh)

The morning of our 4th day in Ireland would bring us to the last leg of the first, road-tripping part of our time in the country. Later that evening, we would be catching a flight to Edinburgh, Scotland!

And while we were very excited, we also couldn’t wait to make the most of our day and drive. We wouldn’t be flying out of Dublin until 8:20pm, and it was just over a 2 hour drive back to the country’s capital from the city of Galway, where we had spent the night and were currently located to start the day.

This meant that we had time to enjoy a morning in Galway, take in the sights on our drive at a leisurely pace, and still be able to get to the airport in plenty of time for our flight!

We started by enjoying a slow morning in our hostel room, and then our first destination for our outing? Coffee and pastries of course!

One nice thing about having a rental car is that we didn’t have to worry about what to do with our luggage or try to time it with checkout. When we were ready to head out, around 10:00am, we got to just pop our suitcases into good, trusty ol’ Murph, and walk back over to the area we had spent our evening the night before. However, this time, instead of enjoying the evening and night life, we got to take part in and witness a Friday morning in action.

We already had a few destinations in mind, the first of which was a popular bakery called Magpie. When we arrived at 10:30, there was already a sizeable line out the door. Now, to be fair, the inside customer space was very small, so it didn’t take much to be out the door, but we still had to do a little waiting before it was our turn up at the counter. Fortunately, this did give us time to select our treats before they got to us, so we didn’t have to worry about holding up the line while we tried to decide.

Magpie Bakery does have “outdoor seating” with benches on a small deck just outside the bakery window. I use outdoor seating loosely because the bakery entrance itself was located inside a mall, so it was outside the bakery but not actually outside. The seating filled up by the time we had our goodies in hand, but fortunately it didn’t matter because we weren’t planning on sitting her to eat as we still had one more stop where we would obtain our coffee.

We walked just a little way down the street to a place called Coffeewerk + Press. This cafe has been recognized globally as one of the World’s 100 Best Coffee Shops and also serves as an independent art publishing house and design shop. We contentedly perused the art and items while waiting for our coffee to be ready. We didn’t purchased anything, but we still enjoyed every moment.

With both coffee and sweets acquired, we now needed to find a spot to sit and enjoy them. With it being the morning, the bar tables were all empty and open since the establishments hadn’t yet opened for the day, so we popped into a couple chairs and set our bounty out on the table in the sun to enjoy.

From the bakery, we’d picked out a peach almond Danish, another kind of Danish with streusel, and something called a strawberry matcha cruffin (mix of a croissant and muffin). The cruffin was Luke’s favorite, and mine was the Danish with streusel. I sipped on my iced latte and Luke his flat white. We enjoyed the delicious food and drink while soaking in the gentle sunshine.

We then spent the next hour wandering the street and exploring any stores we hadn’t had the opportunity the evening before. The time seemed to completely slip away, but in the good way where you’re just so busy not being busy and not being on the clock that the minutes just trickle past.

We wanted to appreciate one more meal before starting to make our way back to Dublin. We made our way down toward the end of the street of the Latin Quarter to a place called Bridie Murphy’s Home Bakery. We ordered a sausage roll and ham and cheese pastie. However, the employee seemed flustered and accidentally rung up two sausage rolls, so we each got our own, which was fine!

Our understanding was that a pastie was a the ingredients surrounded by a flaky pastry, like a hot, savory pastry. However, apparently it can be any kind of bread to make a hot, pressed sandwich, and we were surprised when she brought us what looked like a breakfast sandwich. We double checked that she had brought us the right thing, and she confirmed that it was but acted like she’d made some mistake and was trying to make something right when she hadn’t even done anything wrong! We said it was totally fine, and that we were just making sure!

The sausage rolls we had weren’t just street or convenient store sausage rolls. They were much more meticulously and personally made. The pastry around the roll were perfectly laminated and flaky and crisp, a true artwork confectionary. The sausage inside and the pastie were both good, but nothing compared to the pastry.

After enjoying our meal, it was time to make our way back to Murphy and hit the road.

As previously mentioned, it was only about a 2 hour drive to Dublin. If we do some quick math here, we were leaving Galway at around 1:00 which would put us in Dublin a little after 3:00 for an 8:20 flight. That’s 5 hours early, which is quite a bit above the suggested arrival time for a flight.

This gave us a little wiggle room to do some exploring along the way. We had one particular stop in mind: we wanted to visit Athlone, home to what is on record as the oldest pub in the world! Plus, it was directly in the path of our drive to Dublin, so it wouldn’t have made sense not to make the stop.

We arrived and were successfully able to find parking by around 1:30. We began our walking exploration of the historic riverside town.

One of our points of interest had to be taken in solely from the outside, as the Athlone Castle was closed for construction. So we simply walked around the 12th-century Norman fortress. Even from the outside, you could tell how ancient and impressive of a stronghold it was. I can only imagine how cool and insightful the interactive visitor exhibitions and audio guides would have been!

We continued down the street until we finally had Sean’s Pub, the oldest pub, in our sightline. We didn’t have loads of time, we still had driving, and it was still fairly early in the day, so we didn’t think it wise or particularly appealing to consume a drink, so we opted to once again, enjoy the view from the outside and know that we had technically visited and seen the world’s oldest pub, which was enough for us!

We took another fork of the street which brought us down the rive and popped onto a bench to enjoy the beautiful day and waterway views.

By around 3:00, we were beginning to make our way back to Murphy so that we could complete the final stretch of drive to Dublin’s airport so that we could catch our flight to the next part of our adventure in Edinburgh.

We were pulling into the rental car drop off zone around 5:00 where we said a bittersweet farewell to our lovely and reliable Murphy. We caught a shuttle that brought us to the airport, and it was all pretty smooth, quick, and easy.

By 6:00, we were already through security and making our way toward our gate. The only hiccup we faced was that I was wearing a cropped hoodie for my outfit of the day and had only my bra underneath. This meant I couldn’t remove it, and the expectation at the Dublin airport, which is always different at every airport, is that if it has a hood, you either need to remove it or get patted down. Well, I couldn’t remove it, so I got a very thorough pat down. Lesson learned: wear something under a hooded sweatshirt when going through an airport.

Now, the next chunk of time was the absolute worst experience we’ve ever faced while traveling. Without delving into too much detail because we don’t want to taint the vibe of the post, and I don’t want to relive it fully, we will just hit the “highlights”.

First, our gate number and location got changed like 2-3 times. We had to move spots several times, reform a line several times, and even show our passports and boarding passes to the gate agents twice.

Second, we were flying with Ryanair, an airline notorious for pinching pennies, aggressive additional fees, and strict baggage restrictions. It was our first experience with them, and we’d had only decent experience before, so our mindset was “how bad could it be”? Turns out, really bad. Ryanair lived up to every awful stereotype and complaint it’s received and rightfully earned.

We only had our carry-ons. We were a little worried about their size, but looking around at everyone else’s suitcases in line, they looked about on par with what many other passengers had, so we opted not to have them checked and forge on ahead with them as carry-ons. However, the gate agent had it out for us. He was eyeing us and our suitcases before we even reached the front of the line. Sure enough, when it was our turn, he sent us over to a secondary gate agent to have our suitcase sizes checked. They fit within the bottom of the sizer, but they protruded just slightly from the frame, which was enough to be fined and forced to check them at the gate.

We had to do a walk of shame over to the computer with the secondary gate agent while she processed our fine of $75 each ($150 total) and put tags on our bags to be handed off before boarding our plane. Fantastic.

Lastly, when we boarded the plane, there was somehow even less leg room, so we figured that since we were forced to check our actual carry-ons, we would just consider our backpacks our carry-ons and store them in the compartments above. However, a flight attendant came over and told us that backpacks had to go under seats. That was the last straw for me, and I completely shut down. I sat in my seat and had a terrible time, but thankfully, the flight was only about an hour.

We departed knowing we would have to fly this garbage airline one more time yet to get back to Dublin, which wasn’t much of a mood booster. We were ready to get to our Edinburgh apartment, be done with the day, and have a fresh start in the magical city the next morning.

When we landed a round 9:30, there was still some sunlight left, so we got to enjoy the Uber drive from the airport to where we were staying, taking everything in while also decompressing from our worst flight experience ever.

By the time we got to our place and settled in, it was around 10:30, and the sky had officially began sinking into the inky dark of twilight. The quality of our luxurious and perfectly located apartment was nearly enough to eradicate the nightmare that was Ryanair, so we were more than happy to settle in and finish the evening with some TV. Fortunately, there was a much better day on the horizon.